A Neighbor, a Bull, Some Purebred Cows, and a Dilapidated Fence.

This morning Archie Dwiddlen was retrospecting about some of our old neighbors.

It seems Alden and Issac were neighbors with a fence between them. There was a some confusion about who should maintain the fence. Alden was pretty sure it was Issac’s potion of the fence that Alden’s mongrel angus bull was sneaking through to service Issac’s purebred Hereford cows.

There was a lot of ire between the two about who should fix the fence. Neither one of them would spend a nickel if they could get someone else to do it. Most neighbors sided with Alden because most knew that previous owners of Issac’s property had maintained that particular stretch of fence.

Needless to say Issac was not pleased to be looking forward to double mongrel calves that would be the inevitable result of angus on hereford intercourse. Especially since he hoped to sell the calves to ranchers as purebred Hereford herd improvement stock. You cannot sell mongrel cattle for as much money as purebred Herefords–or Angus for that matter. A mulatto calf was beef—about 130 to 150 dollars worth of beef at the time. A purebred Hereford bull went for two or three times that amount.

So about the third time Alden’s bull went to visit his highfalutin girl friends in Issac’s pasture, Alden gets a call from Issac.

“I got your black bull in my corral,” Issac says, “and I’m keeping him until that goddamned fence is fixed. And I’m billing you for his feed.”

Alden does not bat an eyelash, “Oh, that’s all right, Issac,” says he, “All my cows are bred up now. So why don’t you just turn him out on your heifers. He’ll get his feed then, and he can help your bulls finish their job.

The fence was fixed within a week.

True story told to write lee.com this very morning. (Names changed to protect various reputations.)